Monday, March 05, 2012

Iraqi Oil Production Rises Higher than Anytime Since 1979

Iraq's oil production has risen above 3 million barrels per day for the first time in more than three decades, it announced on Monday, and said it will sharply increase exports with a major new floating oil terminal beginning operations in three days.

"While I am talking to you today, the Iraqi oil production has exceeded 3 million barrels per day," Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told a conference in Baghdad. _Reuters

Iraq's oil production "peaked" in 1979. The peak was a form of "peak oil," but it was a "political peak oil." Expect to see many more examples of "political peaks" which will be exceeded in the future, when political conditions change.

Besides Iraq, in the future we should expect the same phenomenon in several oil dependent nations such as Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, and a number of African oil-producing countries. These nations neglect their production technologies and oilfield maintenance very badly. The incompetence of their national oil production executive and engineering administration would be grounds for immediate termination en masse, if not for the endemic corruption built into all of those country's governments from top to bottom.

Saudi Arabia has the capacity to exceed prior peaks, but the leaders of the kingdom understand that an oversupply of oil on world markets is their deadliest enemy. They will do anything to prevent such an oversupply from occurring again, if they have any control over the matter.

Canada is likely to expand oil production considerably, as long as it has a government that recognises the importance of energy production to a national and provincial economy. US total oil & gas production is likely to rise above prior peaks, when the energy starvationists in the Congress and the White House are removed from power. Brazil is likely to expand its production for some time to come. And so on.

The best place to look for new oil is where you have already produced old oil. That is likely to be true for some time to come, via improved production methods.

And when that fails there are trillions and tens of trillions of barrels of oil equivalent from unconventionals, waiting for human ingenuity to catch up to human needs.